


There Was, There Is, There Will Be

by moodymuse19



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-03-19
Updated: 2009-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moodymuse19/pseuds/moodymuse19
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Then again, maybe it isn’t so surprising they ended up together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Was, There Is, There Will Be

**Author's Note:**

> An amazing amount of thanks to my lovely beta, downloadable08, without whom this would have been near unreadable. (Is that a word? Oh, the irony.)

**1\. There wasn’t.**

For a solid five days after John gives O’Neill his positive answer, John confuses every single scientist and marine that works in Antarctica. Notable exceptions are obviously made for Sumner, O’Neill and Weir because, well. It was just survival instinct.

On the sixth day, someone wearing an orange fleece and a rash attitude to make him noticed in any crowd possible (“_You, Sheppard! With me._”) grabs his arm and locks the both of them in a lab.

John doesn’t defend himself for two reasons. One? Scientists in Antarctica are crazy. _Crazy_. They always go around muttering to themselves and to their laptops and tablets. John picked up on that quite early mostly because the _marines_ tended to avoid them.

The second reason he has to not defend himself is that someone wearing such a color could not _possibly_ be dangerous. It makes him look, of all things, kind of cuddly.

Not that John ever uses such a word.

The first of John’s reasons is true, alright. The second reason is totally and absolutely refuted once the orange fleece guy opens his mouth.

The guy pushes him inside a lab that’s barely bigger than a closet. There’s a table by the left wall, full of stuff including one of the ‘drones’ that the Scottish guy had shot at him.

“Touch,” says Orange Fleece.

John’s eyebrows make a brave attempt to climb into his hairline. “Excuse me?”

“This!” he says, pointing at the table full of trinkets. “Not me. Jesus! Where is your mind?”

John puts his hands on his hips. “You just locked me in lab. What am I supposed to think?”

Orange Fleece crosses his arms and stands in front of him. “Oh, I don’t know, that I want to work uninterrupted? I’ve been trying to get you to myself for hours now.”

John does a miniature shrug. “What can I say, my COs like to keep me busy.”

Orange Fleece rolls his eyes. “Whatever, touch.”

“But I don’t even know your name,” he says with a small grin.

“Dr. Rodney McKay,” he says, looking like something was about to burst. “Would you touch, already?”

John does, if only so McKay wouldn’t have an aneurysm or something. John touches random things, McKay makes notes on a laptop, salivating when they light up, grumbling when they don’t.

Rodney makes John smile and laugh whenever he talks, and John smiles back at him, and stops confusing him with anyone else from that day on.

 

***********************************

**2\. There is a sort of quasi-friendship.**

They're new to the Pegasus Galaxy. So new that they still don't get the full scope of what waking the Wraith means. So new Earth still feels like home.

John is busy taking over Colonel Sumner’s job, however much this memory makes him sick like nothing else ever has. At the end of the day, no matter how you look at it, he shot his CO, and he's taken his job now.

Rodney is busy waking up Ancient systems, geeking out over them and then shutting them off ‘til they can do the proper diagnostics. He calls John every two seconds so he can touch something and light it up, and by the end of their first week, John is sick of it. This has been going on since _Antarctica_. John would’ve thought McKay was too busy to keep doing that here, but it’s only increased in frequency.

They're at one of the labs where everyone sort of dumps whatever Ancient stuff they find. There's not much else in the room other than a large lab table full of Ancient trinkets, Rodney's laptop in the middle of it all. John is sitting across from Rodney, the latter typing furiously one-handed as he holds the latest thing John turned on.

"You do know I have a job too?" says John, "Kind of a busy one, too."

Rodney doesn’t deign to look at him. "Yes, yes, but this is more important, Major, so if you don't mind..."

John frowns. "More important than securing a whole city, establishing protocol, making sure our people are properly trained..." Then he sees what looks like the cross between a turtle and Titanic's The Heart of the Ocean on the other side of the table. "What's that?"

"And my job entails making sure the city doesn't blow up by itself," Rodney continues, typing away and talking as if John had pointed at nothing, "making sure none of us blows it up, scanning the skies to make sure no Wraith are swooping down to eat us. I have no idea," he says at last. He picks the turtle–jewel up, which stays as off as it was expected. Rodney looks at it, his eyes widen a tiny bit. John stretches a hand towards it. "But just in case it's dangerous, don't touch it," says Rodney.

John knows bullshit when he hears it. "It looks like a turtle. How can it be dangerous?"

"C-4 looks like modeling clay."

John's lost this one. "Touché. Look, why don't you just have the gene treatment? I mean, the doc is having a good success rate. Hardly any of the mice have died."

"Oh ha-ha," he deadpans, but then he actually considers it. "It's a good idea, though. Ooh, yes. I can just –” he walks off, turtle–jewel hybrid in hand, mostly likely to find Carson.

John watches him go and turns back to the table. What's not lighted up is buzzing or even vibrating a bit. John checks behind him to make sure Rodney's gone, and then he looks back at the table. He snaps his fingers, thinking 'off' at the same time, and every single Ancient gadget on the table turns itself off at the same time his fingers snap.

John smiles. That will _never_ get old.

 

***********************************

**3\. There is friendship.**

It's been crazy for days. For weeks. Normal life seems extinct, a vague memory they don't even have time to dwell on.

It makes a brave reappearance after they get back from Earth, after John is officially a Colonel, after Rodney has actually slept like a human being, after Elizabeth has sent off the new scientists and marines off to their new bosses and tasks.

Normal life, they now get, is Atlantis. After a year thinking of Earth and wondering when – if – they would ever get back there, coming back to Atlantis is air in their lungs, it’s a smile after a long time of frowning. It's lightness in their hearts none of them share except for a tiny, seemingly all–knowing smile in the corridors.

It's night, and there's the mess hall. It's quiet but with an echo, an echo that talks. The city talks.

John has his feet up on one of the tables, arms crossed.

There're exactly three other people in the same room with him. There's Ellie London behind the counter, cleaning metal trays. Why she's cleaning trays at 3:23 in the morning, John has no idea. But he’s done weirder things at the ungodly hours of the night, so John doesn’t ponder on it too much. Maybe it's therapy, catharsis or something about the past weeks. So he lets Ellie scrub away ‘til he's sure she'll be reflected in the trays.

Two tables over from him is Keela, an Athosian girl. John doesn’t know Keela a whole lot except that he knows she is twenty four years old and four fifths.

(Rodney and Teyla had spent a whole day in a lab converting the most common measurements used in Pegasus to common earth measurements. John had walked in on them in time to help with the last bit of math.)

John can't help but smile. Rodney had only gotten a brief glimpse of his math skills just after Sumner and the others had been taken; it hit him full force when John started spewing off results without needing to grab paper and pencil to do the calculations. Rodney had gaped at him for a full minute.

Off in a corner of the mess, three tables over from Keela, there's Dr. Rick MacDonnell, archaeologist. He's off at the table farthest from both the counter and the doors, head in his hands, three mugs of cold coffee around him, a tablet in front of his face. MacDonnell isn't the kind to stay up at this hour working (he's the kind that makes up an excuse to leave early and isn't fired only because he’s so goddamn brilliant) so John knows that whatever's in the tablet isn't related to work.

It's personal then, and John’s thoughts stop there. He's not watching these people because he's bored, he's doing it because John's idle brain tends to go to Ford these days, and his brain can't take much more needless worry.

Needless, yes. John admits it. It's needless. Ford can take care of himself – on and off the drug enzyme. They can't track him down and they'll go for him if they know something.

It's tiring. Worrying about Ford while trying not to worry so he can function properly. It's exhausting.

He goes back to watching Keela, who is sipping Athosian tea and looking at the room around her in wonder; a few minutes later he hears the transporter door open.

It's Rodney, Rodney, and John practically feels the boredom of insomnia leave him.

John watches as Rodney gets coffee from the machine, smells it, drinks half of it on the spot. John winces because _Jesus_. He's surprised he hasn't burnt himself.

Rodney grabs a cupcake (made from real Earth ingredients. He's surprised there's some left still) and turns back around to head out.

"Rodney," he calls out, and in the quiet of 3:30 am it sounds like he just shouted. Keela and MacDonnell turn briefly to him. Ellie is still scrubbing.

Rodney turns to him. "Oh. Hey." He points towards the coffee and John nods.

Rodney comes to the table with three mugs of coffee - one for John, two for him. John has the decency to take his feet off the table.

"Working late?" says John. He waits for the coffee to cool a bit before drinking it: like most normal human beings do (Rodney's already downed his first mug.)

"Tried to," he shrugs. "Couldn't. Now I can't sleep," he chuckles. "Must be accustomed to Earth time," he says, even though they both know it’s total bullshit.

John shrugs and takes a page out of Rodney's book and sips the coffee as is. He regrets it.

"Are you... I mean, do you..."

John frowns at him, his tongue still burning. "What?"

Rodney peels the wrapping of his cupcake. "Never mind."

And John could just leave it there, he could. It is night, it's late, and they're the only ones talking in the mess hall. They're whispering and it's loud.

But John, for once in life, doesn’t let it go. It's unusual, but these moments sometimes happen.

John says: "Ford?" Rodney hesitates for a second and then nods. "Yeah," says John, not that there is much to say – they're both awake at 3:30 in the morning and they have to work the next day.

Rodney chuckles lightly. "I never thought being a team would be like this, you know?"

John stops looking into his mug and looks at Rodney. "Like what?"

He smiles as he says, "this hard."

And it makes a knot in John's throat, a knot so tight he forces himself to swallow down to clear it. Rodney feels the loss of Ford, everyone knows that; they're not idiots. They might have been total opposites and Ford might’ve hated the prime/not prime game that Rodney favored, but Ford was his _teammate_. Of course he feels it.

Rodney's voice breaks a bit when he says 'this hard' and John nods only, in agreement, in sympathy, in mourning, in relief that Rodney and Teyla are alright.

As soon as this though crosses his mind, another: "You don't want to... leave the team. Right?"

Rodney looks up quickly. "No! No. No, I don't want to leave the team."

John nods. "Because I'd understand..."

"Sheppard, I don't –" says Rodney.

They're so bad at this. They overlap each other as they talk.

"You weren't trained for this..."

"Sure, the labs are safer but..."

"And Teyla and I could hold on ‘til..."

"John," says Rodney.

Rodney’s voice rings in the mess hall; there could have been a party going on around then and John still would've heard it like it was the only sound in the universe.

At this moment, it is.

"Rodney?" Like that, inquisitive. Because Rodney's never said his name before; to the point that for weeks John wasn't sure if he knew it.

"Don't take me off the team," says Rodney, absolutely serious.

John nods, and there's something very tiny inside him that's making cartwheels because Rodney called him by his name. "I won't."

 

***********************************

**4\. There is knowledge of their friendship.**

Rodney spends two days seeing only Carson. Not even nurses, just Carson; cooped up in a private room as if he was a danger to society.

Okay: two days seeing only Carson _and_ Heightmeyer.

After Radek and Sheppard bring him back from the bottom of the ocean, Rodney makes the mistake of telling Carson that he'd hallucinated Colonel Carter in order to help him out of it.

Carson runs him through a battery of tests and scans to scare the pants out of the bravest of marines, gets him a private room and restricts all visits. When Rodney starts getting itchy that he's locked up in the room, Carson realizes his mistake and moves him to one with a wide window, which eases Rodney's breathing a bit.

Heightmeyer tests him ‘til he's cranky, hungry and his head hurts, but both Carson and Heightmeyer conclude he is healthy and sane and that the Carter hallucination was a method of self preservation which, it seems, can take dark and twisted detours in this galaxy.

Rodney rolls his eyes and mocks surprise when they tell him. He tells Carson to make one of his nurses useful and bring him a tray of real food from the mess hall – it's not like there's anything wrong with his _stomach_.

Everybody all but flocks around Rodney when Carson finally allows them. Sheppard, Elizabeth, Radek, Teyla, Ronon, even Cadman.

Rodney grins because his room is about as far as it can get from that awful water–filled Puddlejumper. For one, there are real people with him. It's also big; the sun shines through the window in that way where you can see its rays. It has a wall–to–wall window – not the stained glass kind, the clear common window, where he can see nearly half of Atlantis and the ocean. If he squints and turns his head left, he can see some of the mainland.

Elizabeth and Teyla sit down on the bed, Cadman stands at the end of it, kicking the bed every once in a while with a silly smile. Ronon and Radek stand near the door, John is leaning on the wall by Rodney’s bed.

They ask questions, pat his arms, smile and go their merry way because, while Griffin died, Rodney didn't. They've learned to mourn the dead, yes, but the biggest lesson Atlantis has offered them so far is to enjoy the things that turned out okay.

"Sheppard, wait," says Rodney as everybody’s leaving.

John nods to Teyla and Elizabeth, who looked back briefly to see if everything was okay. Rodney waits ‘til they closed the door behind them.

"Thank you," he says before the nerve leaves him.

John can hardly believe this is why Rodney held him back. Rodney isn't ungrateful when something this big happens, but it's always as something in the passing; they never make a big deal of it. "Rodney, it's fine," he says.

Rodney sits up straighter in bed and John moves to help him up, he’s still weak. "No, let me say this. What Radek and Elizabeth said, about how you modified the jumper to come get me."

"Radek helped," says John. It's not like he could've done much if Radek hadn't showed him _where_ to look.

Rodney nods but says, "leave Radek aside for a moment, okay?"

John frowns. "Okay."

Rodney's eyes have been everywhere since he first spoke to him. Now they settle on John's face. "You went to the bottom of the ocean to get me." It sounds like something huge and something so little at the same time. 'Bottom of the ocean' sounds huge; the bottom of the ocean to rescue Rodney sounds like nothing compared to what he'd do for him.

Rodney is still talking. "I know we – haven't been on the best of terms," says Rodney, and John doesn't want to go there again.

"Rodney."

It's like he never heard John speak. "And I'm really, really sorry I lost your trust. I'd say that feels worse that destroying most of a solar system, but I'm not sure that'd be a good thing to say," he says, looking at John for an answer.

It makes John grin. "Probably would depend on who's listening," he says with a grin and avoiding Rodney's eyes.

Rodney chuckles lightly. "Right. Just – thank you. I wanted to say that and I've said it. So there."

John hesitates before saying anything. He doesn’t even take his hands out of his pockets for about thirty seconds. Then he sits on at the edge of Rodney's bed.

He isn't good at this, but he has to set the record straight.

"Rodney..." He doesn't know where to put his hands that isn't a body part of Rodney. He ends up placing it on the other side of the bed, over Rodney's knees. "There was no other option. We're friends, I wasn't going to leave you down there only because there's some chunks of earth less in the universe."

Rodney does the strangest thing. He frowns. "We're friends."

John reacts as if someone has asked if the Wraith were awake. "Last I checked..."

"Oh."

John smiles now, out and open and a tiny bit teasing. "We've been playing an Ancient game weekly or daily for the past year and half, we watch movies together, we kill evil Wraith together,” he says, poking him in the knee. “That's a friend in my book."

"You listen me talk about Doctor Who," ventures Rodney lightly, even though John's been hooked on the show for nearly a year now.

John nods. "And last week you valiantly sat through all three Back to the Future's with me," and John says this with a measure of awe he'd use if Rodney had killed an entire hive ship on his own.

(Killing a whole hive ship is probably easier for Rodney than watching Back to the Future, John thinks, but doesn’t bring it up.)

"Friends," Rodney says, and he says this as if trying to get a hang of the word. "We're friends."

John chuckles. "New to the concept?"

He had asked it a bit serious, true, but it had been mostly teasing. Until Rodney says, "Yes. Kind of."

And Rodney says this sincerely, so sincerely it gives John a strange surge of so many complicated feelings that he ignores for the sake of looking normal in front of Rodney.

John stands up and clears his throat. "Carson will kick me out if I mention getting you out of here for the game room. But I could bring a chess board…"

Rodney smiles a bit absentmindedly, as if he was still processing it all. Friends.

John chuckles at him and goes get to chess board.

 

***********************************

**5\. There is a change. Only Rodney doesn't know it.**

The change happens slowly, so slowly, that by the time it hits John, it’s too late to even consider denying it.

It all starts a few days before his birthday, at the beginning of December. It’s anti-climatic, December in Atlantis. There’s warm weather and clear skies, a lot of ocean and a lot of work.

(Rodney insists that it’s stupid to keep Earth holidays and seasons. In Atlantis, the day lasts twenty-eight and a half hours, and what they understand for ‘December’ is actually summer where they are and winter lasts for exactly one and a half months. See? Stupid.)

Nevertheless, as soon as it is December 1st on Earth, garlands start appearing, mistletoe and eggnog decorating the mess hall. On the 2nd, some idiot thought that wrapping a garland all around the Stargate would look festive; it gets torn to pieces with the first wormhole of the day. On the 3rd, the Athosian kids ask John to tell them the story of ‘Santa Nicholas’ again; Rodney sits at the back and interjects opinions and random data everyone once in a while, making Teyla and John chuckle.

Then Rodney almost ascends. It was a hard week, but by the end of it (eight days before John’s birthday) Rodney is alive and equally smart as before the whole mess happened, so they call it a win and move on.

It isn’t even a week that Rodney’s back to work after this, and John has difficulty to believe Rodney may be behind on work. He was super smart the past days; logic says he’d have done his work faster than before.

Nonetheless, Rodney spends hours and hours in his lab, sometimes even locked in an office at the back, growling at anyone who comes close (he throws a shoe at John’s head, and reduces three scientists to tears.)

He emerges on the day of John’s birthday. He is exhausted, dirty and hungry. He takes a shower, sleeps ‘til four in the afternoon (Atlantis time, of course) and feeds himself. He works on anything urgent that might’ve surged up while he was incommunicado. He stops three explosions.

When he finishes, a party has spontaneously started in John’s quarters.

It’s a nice party: there’s booze, food, gifts, a new stack of DVDs that Ronon will devour sooner than it will take John to blink. There’s Elizabeth, Teyla, Radek, Carson, Ronon, Lorne. There is no Rodney.

Everybody dutifully ignores this. They watch a movie, talk loud enough for no one to hear the dialogue; they have cake. There is no birthday without cake.

Rodney arrives as everyone is helping themselves to a second round of cake and as they’re putting the second movie in. John smiles widely at him, and then wipes the smile of his face because it makes him feel sort of silly.

Rodney is carrying a huge packet in his arms. It’s a common cardboard box, brown, a string around it; it’s huge and looks heavy. John is intensely curious, but Rodney leaves it on the floor by the door and seemingly forgets it. He doesn’t even excuse himself for being late or for being missing the past days.

Teyla makes room for Rodney on John’s small couch between herself and John. Rodney gets some cake Elizabeth offers him, and sits down to watch The Princess Bride (selected by the birthday boy).

The movie ends and so does the cake. It’s late, they’re tired and everyone is thinking of leaving when Rodney stands up and looks at John.

“What?” asks John. Rodney smiles at him; John’s guts clench.

Rodney kneels by the door, picks up the box he had brought in earlier and gently places it on the floor at John’s feet. “Happy birthday,” he says, for the first time in the day.

John looks at him for a second longer, and then bends forward to open the box.

_That_’s the moment. As he looks in the box, as he realizes the scope of what Rodney’s gift entailed, he realizes the scope of his feelings for Rodney. It’s a process, alright. But he’s come to a sudden and violently true conclusion.

John simply tears the box apart, too scared to even ruin the gift if he lifts it up. John laughs up at Rodney and looks back down: Rodney’s built him _K-9_.

It’s unbelievable how real it looks. It’s modeled after the Mark III version; Rodney’s even bothered to wear the metal the robot dog is made of so it’ll look older. Rodney presses something somewhere and K-9 moves its head and says, “_Affirmative_” in what is unmistakably John Leeson’s voice.

No one else gets it, of course. John and Rodney do, and that’s enough.

John smiles at Rodney like a Christmas tree, like 1,000 watts, like the sunshine and some stars, like so many other clichés that aren’t enough to describe John’s smile, clichés that get thought of anyway. “How – ?” he asks, but he can’t finish the question.

Rodney gets a small remote control out of a pocket and starts moving K-9 around, making him talk lines Rodney got out of his DVDs, moving about, extending his nose to poke John in the leg.

By now, Lorne has remembered his childhood and gets what the heck that thing on the floor is; he explains what ‘Doctor Who’ is to everyone as John and Rodney play like children with the robot dog, fighting for the control.

Rodney wrestles the control out of John’s hands, and for now John is contented with watching. Rodney's built him K-9 and John thinks he might just love him a little bit.

And it grows. Whatever John’s feeling doesn’t stay stationary or doesn’t decrease. It _grows_, all on its own, without help.

By Christmas, Rodney builds him a DeLorean, with a tiny Marty McFly inside.

By New Year's, John is in love with him.

 

***********************************

**6\. There is Jealousy.**

John’s learned to live with it.

It’s not that difficult. He jokes; he shuts down his little brain voices every chance he gets; he keeps playing games and watching movies. He goes on missions, he kills Wraith. He’s controlled that thing that came up during the first weeks where he’d go silly every time Rodney walked away or took his coat off (or moved his hands, or just _moved_); now he acts as if he doesn’t even notice those things.

There was a bit of a moment back when Colonel Carter had announced she’d been coming to work at Atlantis, but he handled that well and, thankfully, Rodney’s behaving _normally_ around her.

It’s not that difficult, even when Rodney talks about Katie.

One day, Rodney and Katie are over. Sam is the one who comments about it, asking about Rodney and how he’s doing. John acts as if he knew the whole thing and says he’s fine. You know Rodney. Bounces right up.

Sam looks strange at him but seems to accept what he said (or, knowing her, she’s filed it away for later retrieval when something else that’s odd pops up.)

John is currently really, _really_ busy trying not to feel like an ass, so he could care less about what Sam thinks about him right now. On the one hand, John feels like laughing and seeking Rodney out to party or something, maybe throw some fireworks.

On the other hand, Rodney was about to propose. The thought hurts, but Rodney was happy. And now Rodney must be sad, moping or doing that self-deprecating dance he only does in private and behind locked doors.

John feels like an ass.

Life used to be much, much simpler when he didn’t have this stupid thing for Rodney.

But every time he tries to think, ‘I wish I didn’t feel like this’, he fails, it sounds fake. Sure, it’s tough, and it hurts in places than John didn’t know he had before. But it’s _Rodney_, and John kind of likes being in love with him.

It’s fun, it keeps him on a different sort of edge than the one he’s accustomed to; it’s _Rodney_. John has the slight suspicion that, had he been given a choice in the matter, he would’ve probably chosen Rodney, too.

 

***********************************

**7\. There is desperation**

With a hand on his shoulder all the way from the pier to Rodney’s quarters, John accompanies Rodney back to sleep.

Rodney has a small smile on his lips, the giggles about the ‘Arthur’ line still attacking them every once in a while, even half an hour later. John palms the door open and Rodney goes to bed at once, not even stopping at the bathroom.

“I’m not tucking you in,” says John, and Rodney smiles at this. Rodney has a good smile, wide and full and sincere, but it’s a bit unnerving how often he’s been doing that lately. This new Rodney the parasite is bringing is cool, and easy to entertain, but it’s not his Rodney, his friend, his… It’s not Rodney. John is friends with Dr. Rodney McKay, not this person.

“Will you – never mind,” says Rodney instantly, rearranging the sheets he kicked to the floor.

John leans on the wall by the door. “What?”

“Never mind,” he shakes his head. “Go to sleep, you’ve done more than your share.” He means this. There is no sarcasm. John feels odd without sarcasm.

John takes a tentative step towards him. “Rodney. What is it?”

Rodney sits on the bed. “I, um, I don’t like being alone any more,” and he must know how abnormal that sounds for him, because he stutters, hesitates and doesn’t look at John when he says it. He chuckles mirthlessly, “I have the stupid fear that the next time I see everyone, the next time I see you, I’m not going to know who you are.”

John nods once, a solemn promise: “I’ll remind you.”

Rodney cocks his head. “What if I don’t believe you?”

John smiles. It’s not sarcasm, but it’s close. “I’ll show you pictures.”

“Maybe you photoshopped them.”

John rolls his eyes. “Rodney!”

“Right, right. Sleep,” he says as he slides beneath the covers.

John nods. “I’ll stay here.”

Rodney frowns. “Don’t be an idiot, you can’t.”

John looks for a seating surface that’s not either the floor or covered with stuff. It’s not easy. “At least until you’re asleep.”

“John…”

John stops his search and looks at Rodney. “Stuck with me, remember?”

Rodney nods minutely. “Right. Okay. So, uh, goodnight.”

John nods his goodnight and watches Rodney turn to his left side, facing John, but he closes his eyes. John goes to Rodney’s desk, clears the chair of two laptops and the depleted Ancient shield, and sits down.

John is anything but bored at the moment, but before Rodney thinks he has a weird kink and gets off on watching him sleep (which… well…) he grabs a Sudoku book from the desk, a pencil and starts completing the first table he sees undone, mindlessly doing it in the semi dark, forcing his mind to not think of anything but the numbers in front of him.

It’s easy. That’s why he sort of likes numbers.

Rodney’s breathing eases and evens out, and now he’s really asleep. John looks at him from over the sixth Sudoku table he’s completing and sees he’s started drooling a bit. Yup, definitely asleep.

John closes the books, throws the pencil somewhere between a laptop and the wall, and holds his head with his hands, elbows on his knees. He is most definitely not trembling.

John is scared, so scared, and for the first time in so long, he isn't afraid to admit it. John is scared because he's losing Rodney, and he's losing Rodney so patently that, had Rodney been in better shape tonight, he'd have spilled absolutely everything he has to say to him.

Rodney wanted to say _goodbye_. John refused, and would’ve gladly told him just why he can’t ever say goodbye to Rodney. Not two years ago when he was super–Rodney, not now.

It's a scary thought, that one. If Rodney had been himself, John would have told him everything. All of it.

He'd have said words he hasn't said in years, words he said to Nancy only once. Words he really wouldn't mind repeating to Rodney again and again if that will hold _his_ Rodney back a bit longer.

But Rodney is not going to listen to those words; Rodney isn't in any state of mind to even _hear_ those words. John has to swallow them and all words, and all he can do is watch Rodney sleep as his brain deteriorates even more.

He hates this, this slow decline, this slow death, and he can do nothing about it.

He understands very, very well now why Ronon's death of choice is to go down fighting. He understands too well.

 

***********************************

**8\. There is hurt.**

It hurt when Rodney was going out with Katie Brown.

Sure, she was absolutely not what he needed (even Teyla had said so once, but a lot more polite). Katie was nice, a good person and a reason for Rodney to spend a bit of time outside the lab – which Carson had unsuccessfully tried for three and a half years, and Keller didn’t seem to be going anywhere with it, at least professionally.

But as much as Katie wasn’t right for Rodney, Katie got to kiss him, spend time with him, and have sex with him. Ergo: it hurt. John mostly ignored it, but still.

This, though. This was absolutely wrong. It was wrong in the sense that whatever Rodney had going on with Jennifer could actually _work_.

Mostly because it had, once, in an alternate universe, timeline or whatever it was that John had ended up. Old Rodney had told him: Jennifer and him had worked, for almost a year. If she hadn’t died, they would have possibly worked for a long time.

So when one day John walks into the mess to Rodney and Jennifer having a beer all by themselves, he turns around and leaves. Because that is the beginning of the end for John, who’s losing Rodney without ever having him.

It hurts even more when Teyla offhandedly comments how Rodney is going to help Jennifer off world. Rodney’s days off are usually reserved for John, who took him on Puddlejumper rides that begin as work and end up lazing about anywhere they fell. They play chess, or try to perfect Rodney’s unfinished new version of their old Ancient game (because it’d been _cool_ and they kind of miss it.) They watch movies, compare Old Who to New Who. John tortures Rodney with Back to the Future.

Now there is a ‘_kinder, gentler_’ Rodney McKay, voluntarily going off world on his free time for her.

Sure, Ronon is into Keller too. Rodney might not end up with Jennifer at all. But, like a bad version of Davos, John had seen the future.

And he wasn’t included.

 

**********************************

**9\. There is another change. Only this time John is the one that doesn't know it.**

Once, when he was four, his kindergarten teacher told Rodney he was very, very smart. Nobody had ever said this before. Rodney beamed for the rest of the day.

The next person to tell him he was smart was his mum, when she was having a good day – his father had been away on business, which was probably the reason she was having a good day.

As time passed and Rodney grew (as Rodney’s _ego_ grew) people stopped saying he was smart, as if it was so obvious they didn’t want to waste any time saying what was clearly evident.

Or, as Rodney’s father had once put it, Rodney himself said it so often that if other people started using the word too, the word would wear out and disappear.

It didn’t make that much sense; the more Rodney thought about this phrase the more it became distorted and senseless. But Rodney’s father had been practically on his deathbed then, so Rodney dismissed it as a convoluted way of saying ‘Son, you’re very smart’.

Yes, Rodney is very smart. He’s quick on the uptake for both problems and witty answers. Sometimes, though, he needs to be hit upside the head for him to grasp something.

When it happens, a Sunday afternoon, nothing extraordinary has been going on. Woolsey makes him tag along with Lorne’s team as they take on unexplored parts of the city on the vicinity of the west pier. They have been discovering empty labs and old quarters full of beds all afternoon when they come up across a lab that actually looks useful.

It’s almost like Rodney’s lab: expansive, huge. Well-lit, airy, very close to a transporter. The lights turn on when Lorne and Rodney walk in, but none of the consoles in the middle of the room turn on, not even the lights that are there just for decoration (or crappy illumination, Rodney never did figure that one out).

“I’m going to call a science team,” says Lorne as he takes in the length of the room.

“I am a science team!” says Rodney, already touching consoles here and there.

Lorne chuckles. “You’re also just one person, doc. There’s about seven consoles in here, and unless you can split into seven… I’m a calling a science team.”

Rodney grumbles. “Fine, fine,” he says. “But this one’s mine.”

Lorne reluctantly smiles as he makes the call. The console Rodney’s taken hold of is higher than the rest, with more lights and switches than the rest – it’s like being presented with a Volkswagen Beetle and a Hummer. Rodney’s predictably going for the Hummer.

Lorne watches over as Rodney fiddles with crystals at the back of the console for almost ten minutes. He himself goes about the room, looking it thoroughly over.

“Oh,” says Rodney.

Lorne turns to find Rodney standing in front of his console as it is slowly lighting up. Something grabs Lorne’s attention and he looks down only to find the floor beneath Rodney is turning on, lights coming on as if it was a chess board – one on, one off.

It’s a whirlwind of actions after it. Rodney goes unresponsive but still somehow manages to remain standing, staring off into space as if there was a TV in front of him. Lorne tries to jerk him awake, but as soon as he touches Rodney he is zapped as if touching the brig cell from the inside.

Ten minutes later there are two science teams in the lab, including two marines and Rodney’s team. Everyone is sort of hovering around as Radek goes about the consoles, fiddling with what he can fiddle.

There’s nothing he can do, though: the console Rodney’s standing in front of zaps whoever touches it. The can do little else but wait, which unnerves every single scientist in the room.

*

_There’s a scene, playing out in Rodney’s head. It plays over and over again, and it’s very simple: Rodney is lying on his stomach in bed, naked. John is besides him, also naked. And that’s not what grabs Rodney’s attention._

John kisses Rodney’s shoulder, a tiny kiss that’s given through a smile and bubbling laughter in their hearts. They are both happy and relaxed.

And they are both in love.

*

When Rodney finally snaps out of it, it’s nothing they did: whatever the machine was doing to him has finished.

Sheppard’s the first to come to him, Keller a close second as she fears she’ll be zapped again.

“Rodney? Rodney!” calls John. He tentatively touches Rodney’s arm and grabs a firm hold once he sees it’s okay.

Rodney looks at John with the most peculiar look, never noticing there are other people in the room. “What?” Rodney asks softly.

“Are you alright, buddy?” asks John as he waves Jennifer over.

Jennifer makes him sit down and checks him all over, but her face goes from anxious to relaxed quite soon. “He’s fine,” she says. “Pulse a bit quick, but apart from that…”

Rodney stands up helped by Jennifer and John, seemingly not noticing Jennifer or anyone else. “Sorry. I kind of forgot where I was,” he says, still looking at John.

Radek comes forward. “What happened?”

There’re people in the room, Rodney notices. It’s not only John; there’s Teyla and Lorne and Radek and Jennifer and Ronon…

Rodney blabbers before thinking of the consequences. “It shows you things that are hidden.” He notices frowns all around. “I mean, in yourself. Things you’ve been denying, repressing or things you’ve forgotten.”

“How do you know this?” asks John.

“It had a sort of prologue,” he says amusedly. “Told me what it’d do before it did it.”

John’s stance relaxes a bit. “That was surprisingly kind of the Ancients.”

“For once in their lives,” says Radek as he waves people over to Rodney’s console to turn it off.

“Okay. Hidden things,” says John. “Why would the Ancients invent this? Sounds a bit trite.”

Rodney’s still standing in the same position than he was before Jennifer made him sit down: legs a bit apart, hands fisted at his side, staring off either at John or into nothing. “It shows you what you most want; it helped the Ancients discover what obstacles they had to overcome before ascending.”

“Like the mirror of Erised?” asks Lorne.

Rodney’s still dazed, it takes him a second to get the Harry Potter reference. “Yes. Only you sort of live it. You’re living that and at the same time you’re a witness, it’s odd.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” asks John.

Rodney looks at John for the longest time, almost as if studying him. “Yes,” he says very firmly.

John nods. “Okay,” he says, weirded out by the answer.

“What did you see?” asks Simpson suddenly.

John sees Rodney swallow. He’s suddenly troubled at this and says, “Rodney,” and waits ‘til he has Rodney’s eyes on him. “What did the machine show you?”

Rodney just looks at John, biting his lips a bit as if he was trying to suppress a sound or a word or something. “Um, I…”

“Doc?” presses Lorne.

John suddenly gets it. “I think that should be a private question, folks,” he says, almost as quickly as Rodney speaks, looking at him all the time.

“Oh,” says Simpson, and blushes a bit. “Yes, good point.”

“Sorry,” says Lorne.

“But the machine works?” asks Radek. “No flaws, nothing about to explode?”

Rodney chuckles slightly. “It’s in perfect condition.” He doesn’t say, ‘_it works too well_.’

 

***********************************

**10\. There is life getting complicated.**

Rodney lasts a day in the daze the machine left him in, going about bumping into things and confusing people.

The next morning, after his first three cups of coffee, he fast-forwards to his usual speed. He starts yelling and criticizing, correcting and drinking coffee by the liter.

He starts panicking by lunch.

He goes into his quarters and starts walking about from one end to the other, muttering things and theories to himself, creating probability charts and getting out a whiteboard and scribbling lists and lines of codes.

In the end, he wipes out the whiteboard, closes down his laptop and takes a transporter to the new lab. He yells at everyone to leave the room, closes the door behind them and sinks beneath the console. He spends a full hour checking it over: it has to have a problem, it can’t be true.

Rodney unscrews and loosens things, changes crystals and makes four diagnostics. He stops after he nearly slashes his hand in half trying to loosen a panel that was only a decorating fixture. He’s putting the conclusions before the evidence here, and it’s not the way he works. Not the way he’s _supposed_ to work.

“The machine works fine,” he says out loud, forcing the words out of himself and into his brain.

He has something to say next, a phrase that got stuck in his mind ever since that machine all but spat him out; a phrase he’s refused to say out loud or to even think properly. It’s the obvious logical conclusion after what the machine showed him.

“And I am in love with John,” he says, head bending forward as he cradles his injured hand to his chest.

 

***********************************

**11\. There is an end.**

It goes on for exactly five days longer.

He tries fooling himself that it’s a simple crush, hero worship, a big brother sort of feeling; he tries telling himself that his feelings for Jennifer (his very recent _girlfriend_, he reminds himself) are much stronger than whatever the hell he feels for John.

It doesn’t work, of course. He gives up on this strategy barely a day after he started it, mostly because every time she goes for a kiss, he always, _always_ wonders how John would kiss him.

On the fifth day, as Jennifer is mending a slash on his arm that happened when one of his minion’s slippery hands ended up unscrewing his bicep instead of a console panel, it occurs to Rodney that he should break up with her.

“So…” she says as she slowly stitches the wound.

Rodney frowns. “So…?”

“Are we going out anytime soon?” she says, very carefully not looking at him but rather at the needle she’s using.

Rodney frowns and shudders at the idea of an off world date. “Out where? We’re just about the most civilized thing on this galaxy!”

Jennifer rolls her eyes. “I meant as for a drink. A beer, dinner… you know,” she says. She’s halfway through the wound already.

A date, Rodney’s mind provides. Which will probably happen in the mess hall, where John will probably be, and Rodney suddenly feels sick at the idea of being in a date with Jennifer while John is in the same room. Sick and a bit of an asshole towards her.

“Oh. Right, um.” He frowns, deep in thought, already planning how to break up with Jennifer and not have her stab him with a scalpel the next time he’s injured. “Well, if you’re free…”

“Marie’s on shift tonight. I’m free,” she smiles. She’s done with the wound, he notices.

“Oh, well,” he says, heart feeling like lead. It’s only five hours ‘til dinner time. “I’ll, um, talk to you then. Mess hall?” he says, barely waiting for her nod before he’s off.

*

She’s barely sat down before he starts speaking. He says a lot of things, mostly because Jennifer is a good person and doesn’t deserve the same ending Katie had. Jennifer deserves ‘I’m sorry’ and a clearly pronounced ‘break up’.

It’s fast, awful and terrible: the most terrible of things is that she _understands_. She’s disappointed, of course. Her face falls to just about sea level and all the light goes from her eyes, which looks wrong, _wrong_ in someone so utterly full of life.

She’s good, though, and strong. She says she understands, that it’s better this way rather than hating him later on. And that she hopes he finds what he needs.

Rodney shudders, and gets the strong suspicion that she’s put two and two together and related the ‘Desire Machine’ to their break up.

He really feels like an ass now.

*

He has tracked down Ronon not ten minutes after Jennifer walked out of the mess hall. He’s sparring with Teyla in the gym, and Rodney really didn’t want to do this with witnesses but Teyla’s not so bad. He could’ve gotten a marine. Or Lorne.

“I just broke up with Jennifer,” he says as soon as the doors close, before Ronon and Teyla even notice him in the room.

That stops them quite effectively, though. Ronon was about to hit the back of Teyla’s knees, Teyla was about to hit Ronon on his ribs.

“You what?” asks Ronon, letting the bantos rod in his hand clatter to the ground. Rodney would take a step back, but he’s right against the door.

“What happened?” asks Teyla softly.

Rodney shakes his head before they think the fault’s with Jennifer. “Nothing, nothing. It’s, um, me not her. You know. Nothing,” he says quickly before his courage leaves him or his hearts stops beating altogether. He looks at Ronon. “I just – thought you’d like to know. And, well, hit me or something if you want. I’m not going to duck,” he says, and punctuates this by taking a step forward.

Teyla puts a hand on Ronon’s arm, just in case. “Ronon is not going to hit you. Right?”

Ronon is frowning at Rodney, thoroughly confused. He nods.

Rodney slips his hands into his pockets. “Well, if that’s all and no beating’s going to take place, I should, um,” he says, and points towards the door.

Teyla gives him the Athosian version of a hug and then moves to palm the doors opened. “I will check on Jennifer,” she says, briefly touching his arm before leaving.

Rodney turns to leave but is stopped when Ronon says, “Rodney.” And it stops Rodney where he is, because he remembers exactly the last time Ronon called him by his name: when Carson died. “What happened?”

_She wasn’t what I wanted_, Rodney wants to say. Instead, he says: “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

*

Rodney ends up at the mess hall late, way later than any normal human being is usually seen on that place. He’s deliberately avoided it during the normal eating hours, not wanting to run into Jennifer.

He’s grabbed a coffee and a salad, and if anyone who knew him saw what he was eating, they’d probably send him straight to the infirmary.

“Hey,” says John suddenly, out of nowhere, with a pat on Rodney’s shoulder. Rodney jumps in his seat.

“John – Sheppard,” he says, the instinct of addressing John by surname surfacing before his thoughts focus properly on John.

“Yes, that’s my name,” John says frowning, resisting the urge to add ‘_don’t wear it out_’ and break into a song about Olivia Newton-John. “What’s with you?”

Rodney swallows as John sits down. “Nothing. Why would anything be with me?”

Rodney watches as John sits down with his tray full of food, already unwrapping things and opening bottles. Rodney watches all of him: hands, lips, hips, hair, eyes. He can’t _not_ watch.

John’s frown deepens. “You know, buddy, you’ve been strange ever since that machine got its claws on you. Seriously, what could be so disturbing?”

Rodney attempts normalcy by stealing some of John’s fries. “Oh, not disturbing. Just… unexpected,” he says as he munches on the fry. “Things I had no idea about,” he adds a bit softer, stealing another fry, still looking at John.

“You’re never going to say what you saw in there, right?” says John with a small smile as he gets his plate of fries away from Rodney.

Rodney returns the smile, faking it from one end of the mouth to the other and shakes his head. “Not anytime soon.”

 

***********************************

**12\. There is death.**

Neris is tall – somewhere between John and Ronon’s height. He has dyed black hair, the blonde roots peeking on top of his head. He’s good–looking, Rodney notices as soon as the Mareenans greet him at the entrance of the village.

‘Greet’ is a word none of them know if it works too well. The four of them were walking towards the villagers that had been sent to greet the newcomers, pleasant and kind smiles going all around; the next second the villagers are gasping and crying and swearing and pointing. They never quite catch what they were pointing at, but the four of them grasp that it was _bad_.

John only manages to say, “Uh oh,” before four guys come to hold them. They try to escape, to duck and run to safety but the guys who were sent for them look like they could be Ronon’s big brothers, with arms the size of Rodney’s entire body. They are captured and disarmed embarrassingly soon.

They are all but dragged across the village, words like ‘sinners’ and ‘execution’ going around.

They are brought to the feet of the village leader, who was none other than the guy at the front of the greeting committee, one by the name of Neris.

It all happens so quickly: at one moment, Neris is talking and evaluating what to do with them, the next one he’s sentenced them all to die instantly.

Not a second later, John is speaking.

“No,” he says firmly, and Neris looks at him like a teacher looks at a student who spoke out of line. “I am their leader. If someone has to die, it has to be me. I take responsibil–” he is kicked on the stomach, an effective way to shut someone up.

“Fine,” says Neris. “I understand what leadership entails. You will die, your people will be sent back alive.”

They are split up before any of them can even insult John for being so stupid.

These people are effective, wasting no time unnecessary dialogue or gloating. They are made to wait about half hour or so, locked up in different ends of the village. Whatever hope there is for a big bold rescue or a spectacular escape soon dies when they see the guillotine.

At least it looks like one, but the French had nothing on these people. This one is shorter but more ornate, the blade made of an odd material that made it look sharp, never mind how the thing would actually feel on you.

Ronon, Teyla and Rodney are still being held by the same house–sized villagers from the beginning. John is being pushed towards the guillotine.

The scene is surreal. It’s early morning in the village, the light still grayish and almost non-existent. It’s cold, everyone seems to be off sleeping and there are an incredible amount of birds singing around, early morning birds, singing cheerfully at the rising sun. The blade of the guillotine shines brightly.

Neris himself is waiting for John at the guillotine.

John catches their faces, smiles bravely, nods, look at Rodney for the longest time, and then is bent over the guillotine. All they can see is John’s back and his behind, kneeling on the earth as Neris unties a rope that goes up, up, all the way up to the blade.

The blade is released. The guillotine does to John what half the Pegasus Galaxy couldn’t accomplish before. It kills him.

There’s a roar, a scream, and Rodney has no idea if it’s his scream or the three of them that screamed at the same time.

John is dead. John is _dead_.

_John_ is dead.

He can’t quite grasp the scope of it. Sure, he can hear Ronon trashing about, probably bringing the whole village down. Teyla is standing but looking about as sick as Rodney feels; she’s calling out to Ronon. But Rodney can’t grasp the scope of it. John, five years of John coming to an end like this, no more John, never again, no, nothing, he _can’t_.

Rodney’s eyes are fixed on the tuft of unruly hair peeking from a side of the guillotine’s base, where John’s head would never be if it’d be attached to his body. He takes a step towards him, not quite knowing how his legs are working, but not caring either. John is, John can’t be, how can John –?

Through the fuzz in his brain, he hears Teyla call to him, then to Ronon. The thrashing stops and in one second, Ronon’s collarbone is in his vision, his arms holding him firmly.

“I need to –” Rodney says, but he has no idea what he needs or what he’s going to do when he gets there, so he lets Ronon pull him away from John’s body.

John’s _dead_ body. Ronon still pulls from him, Rodney still looks at John. Immobile, bloody; incomprehensible.

 

**********************************

**13\. There is Logic.**

Ronon is still pulling him away from John’s body when they blink, and they’re sitting on the floor of a house.

A house?

Their heads hurt, and they’re confused, but they’re well enough to notice that John is with them, _John_ sitting between Teyla and Rodney, holding his head as if he was having the worst headache in the galaxy.

All four of them _are_ having the worst headache in the galaxy, but John is sitting next to them, so they really don’t care much. Rodney crawls to him, taking his head in his hands, checking him over for gaping wounds or a detached neck.

“The headaches are a side effect the first time you use the Nervofloris we gave you with your drinks. It will pass soon enough.”

There are people with them. One of them is Neris, the guy who’d killed John. Ronon stands up and pulls his gun out, pointing it at Neris. It’s very obviously set on ‘kill’.

“What the hell was that?” yells Rodney, a hand on the back of John’s neck, the other on his wrist. Teyla is on the other side of him, a hand on his back.

“That is the Nervofloris,” says Neris very calmly. Teyla stands up and points her side arm at the guy. Neris hurries. “It is a revered tree in our world, handed to us by the Gods themselves. It has the ability to show us things, to teach us lessons from the safety of our homes.”

“That didn’t feel safe,” says John, leaning ever–so–slightly on Rodney, wincing at the pain in his brain.

“You were,” says Neris, and by now they remember how things truly went down when they arrived. They were greeted at the entrance of the village, yes, but they were _pleasantly_ greeted. There were talks of trading and partnership. They were led to Neris’ own house, where they sat down in their version of a sitting room, were given some water and promptly fell ‘asleep’.

Neris is still talking. “Our culture believes that only in death do we truly know ourselves. Now we know you as the good people you are. We may converse as you wish.”

Ronon and Teyla look at each other – they’re not huge on killing a human being who _technically_ didn’t hurt them. However much they would like to see Neris end up like John had.

“Let’s go home,” says Rodney suddenly.

Teyla turns to him but Ronon’s eyes never leave Neris. “What?” she asks.

Rodney is still holding John, still kneeling by him. “These people are assholes and idiots and I’d like to empty my gun on them but they’re obviously not killers. John is _alive_,” he says, and it’s the right thing to say, because Ronon’s shoulders relax in the most microscopic of ways. “Let’s go home, block their address. And maybe give it to the Wraith the next time we see one.”

Ronon smiles vindictively at Neris and his people when Rodney says this, and only now lowers his gun.

Teyla helps Rodney carry John, who is still weak – Neris attempts to explain the Nervofloris has stronger effects on whoever ‘dies’ and that he’ll be fine by the next morning.

As an answer, Ronon shoots every single Nervofloris tree he sees, setting most on fire. Instead of chasing them, the villagers run to salvage what they can of their trees. Teyla calls to Ronon, tells him to run ahead and dial the gate and tell Atlantis they’re returning earlier.

He is pissed, she understands, they all are angry and mad and yet relieved beyond words that John is alive, but with John down for the day, they don’t need the villagers suddenly deciding the proper solution is reenacting their hallucination.

 

**********************************

**14\. There is No Logic**

“They won’t leave,” they hear Jennifer say.

“But the Colonel is fine?” asks Woolsey.

“He’s fine, he’s perfect. I mean, I detected traces of some odd drug in his blood but as much as it seems to be what made him so exhausted, the drug’s disappearing fast, there won’t be anything left of it by morning. The thing is, I haven’t been able to check them over. Not even Rodney,” Jennifer says.

Not even Rodney, they hear. John’s team is in his room, watching over him – it’s a show of how badly the planet left them that Rodney hasn’t said a word about the drug in their system. None of them want medical attention.

The sigh they hear belongs to Woolsey. “It’s alright, Dr. Keller. Teyla briefly told me what happened – I don’t blame them for their overprotection.”

Rodney frowns briefly at Teyla – he doesn’t remember her leaving John’s side for a minute, he doesn’t understand when she had the time to do this.

But he just saw John die. Maybe he’s handling it worst than he thinks he is.

“What happened down there?” asks Jennifer, lowering her voice, probably trying for the three of them to not hear her.

It’s no use, of course. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla hear perfectly fine as Woolsey tells Jennifer what happened in the planet, their minds providing the Technicolor and Surround Sound version of it.

Jennifer gives out a choked gasp, and that’s the last they hear of her – if you don’t count a ‘_they are not to be disturbed at all_’ she says to someone. She leaves three trays of food for them, and tells them all to call her if they need anything. Ronon says Thank You, Teyla squeezes her arm; Rodney is busy looking at John.

They eat where they are: Teyla in the only chair in the room, Rodney and Ronon sitting on John’s bed as he sleeps off the day thanks to whatever Jennifer gave him.

As the hours pass, Ronon and Teyla start talking amongst themselves. Not much, and all is done in whispers even Rodney can’t quite grasp, never mind the outside world. Rodney is awake but almost dead to the world; it reminds Teyla of the slight daze he was left in after he was released by the newly dubbed ‘Desire Machine’.

Ronon and Teyla stand up sometime past midnight, when Atlantis is quiet and her lights are dimmed to the minimum needed to go around and not bang against anything in the way. It’s the most unsettling hour in a city always bustling with activity, with people running around smiling and cursing, with a threat always pending. Midnight in Atlantis is eerie, the color of storm clouds in shadows, the color of the sea when the moons are full.

“You should sleep, Rodney,” says Teyla, squeezing his upper arm. She’s had one eye on John and one on Rodney the last hours, worried at just how intensely Rodney’s been looking John. “It has been a long day for all of us.”

He looks at her before she has the idea of bringing a straight jacket. “I’ll sleep on the chair,” he says dismissively, with the same tone he says he’ll crash after whatever he’s working on is finished.

His face speaks volumes of how utterly non dismissive he is of the situation, how out of the ordinary all this is. His eyes are slightly red and sunken, squinting in the dark as they get tired and tired and sleep doesn’t come.

Teyla exchanges a look with Ronon – the frowns they were giving John hours before all going to Rodney now. “You always say sleeping in that chair puts out your back,” she says.

Rodney rolls his eyes, and it’s such a familiar gesture it makes them want to smile. “I’ll roll a bed into the room,” he says, though the room is just three curtains and a wall dividing the outside from the inside.

“Let us know when he wakes?” she asks.

“Of course,” he says firmly.

They leave with two goodnights, but before Rodney hears them walk away, the curtain to John’s left side is pushed back and Ronon enters, pushing a bed inside the division. He places it as close as he can to John’s own bed, still mindful of the space Jennifer would need if there was an emergency.

Rodney nods his thanks at him; Ronon nods back as he rolls back the curtain.

Rodney doesn’t sleep, of course.

He stays sitting at the edge of John’s bed for another hour. His knees hurt and his legs are getting pins and needles every twenty minutes, so he makes the concession of moving to the bed next to John. The bed is cold as he curls up beneath the blankets: he lies on his side, facing John.

*

Rodney never knows what wakes him up until he sees John is awake and looking at him.

Rodney gets up from his bed so suddenly he accidentally pushes it towards John’s, jolting John all over.

“Jesus,” says John, and the jolt seems to jolt his bladder too because he’s suddenly swinging his legs over the edge.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Rodney as he goes around the beds. “Do you need help? Want me to call someone?”

John grins a bit as he stands up, looks down and seems glad to be wearing scrubs. “I think I can go to the toilet by myself, Rodney.”

Rodney nods and takes a step back as he watches John make a run for the bathroom – he’s good, Rodney reminds himself. Good, not sick and with his head still very much attached to his neck.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” asks John as he leaves the bathroom and walks back to his bed.

“I stayed the night,” says Rodney simply, hovering as John gets back on his bed, arranging the covers that got stuck between the two beds.

John looks at him as Rodney fumbles with the sheets; he simply stares at him. Rodney waits until he’s back on his own bed to say, “You died.” Almost like an accusation.

John grins a bit. “You know, technically it was all a dream.”

Rodney’s hands fist the sheets and mattress beneath him. “I saw you die. We all saw you being _beheaded_, so I’m sorry if I want to stay the night and be sure I’m not going to wake up in that village with you still dead.” And he adds, a bit sadly, a bit reflective, “Which is very likely to happen in this Galaxy.”

John’s eyes are on Rodney’s fists. He’s misjudged the levity of the matter. “I’m sorry.”

Rodney nods. “It’s not your fault.” And after a beat, “Ronon and I want to sic the Wraith on those people.”

John chuckles. “Not a bad plan.”

“I know. Teyla says it would be wrong, though.”

“Dammit,” says John. Teyla tends to be rational all the time, but she’s gotten worse (or better at it, depending on who’s talking) since she became a mom.

“Next time, don’t play martyr,” says Rodney suddenly.

“I wasn’t –”

“No, I’m sorry, but I’m tired of watching you almost–die.” He says this with such vehemence, such seriousness that John sits up in bed and looks at him. “The next time, because I’m rational enough to know the Pegasus Galaxy will throw a ‘next time’ at us – the next time we’ll do it properly. Let Teyla return home and leave Ronon and I to die with you because I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” he says, and looks at him for the first time in minutes, “but we all would gladly die with you.”

John sighs, there’s an internal battle raging on inside him, consciously thinking of what to do, how far to go, what to say. “Rodney…”

“No.” He sits up in bed too, but it’s still difficult to look at John. “I’ve got Jeannie and I’ve got a niece but I still would rather die with you than live on after someone’s managed to behead you.”

It breaks something inside John. Whatever John was about to say makes a run for it and doesn’t return.

Rodney sighs. His voice is quieter now. “That’s the way I feel. That’s the way I’ve felt for a long time.”

John looks at Rodney for the longest time, but Rodney doesn’t feel scrutinized. He lays down, trying to calm himself, because it’s no good picking a fight with John now, he’s not at fault –

“What did that desire machine show you?” asks John suddenly.

Rodney breathes, in and out, and turns his head to look at John. He’s past everything now. “It showed me you.”

“How?”

“We were in bed,” Rodney says. John smiles. “Happy.” John smiles wider.

John’s voice is a whisper beneath all the noises of the night. “We’re in bed now.”

“I’m not too happy, though,” he says, trying some levity and failing at it.

And then John is moving, fast and slow at the same time. Rodney’s oddly aware of everything – one of John’s knees touching his thigh, his hand taking the side of Rodney’s face and neck. There’s skin against skin and Rodney never thought it to be true when someone said their lover’s touch burnt. It does.

John is hot, he has stubble and calloused hands, but he’s practically straddling Rodney, kissing him softly, almost as a test.

Rodney frames John’s face with his hands but he pushes him back a bit. “John, John.”

John looks at him. They’re so close, incredibly close. “What?” John’s breath hits Rodney’s neck.

“This is – we’re men,” he says.

John grins widely. “I’ve noticed”

“You’re military,” Rodney says, John’s head still between his hands.

John hasn’t moved. “Yes, I am.”

John’s answer seems to amuse Rodney a bit. “Woolsey would have a fit if he saw us.”

“True, he doesn’t strike me as the voyeur type.”

Rodney winces, turns his head to the side. “Oh, that – that’s nasty.”

John has the decency to look a bit apologetic. “Yeah, I know.”

And he kisses Rodney again.

“John.”

John sits back on his legs, over Rodney’s thighs. “Rodney, I get it. It doesn’t make sense. We don’t make sense.”

Rodney frowns and nods. “That’s right, we don’t.”

“Then stop trying to solve the puzzle,” he smiles.

Rodney crosses his arms like the very image of a petulant child. “I hate it when I can’t find an answer.”

It makes John smile affectionately. “Do you want us to make sense? You go back with Jennifer, I can contact Larrin…”

Rodney’s face falls and hardens at the mention of Larrin. “Then again, maybe it’s a good thing we don’t make sense.”

John grins now, wide, wider and leans back in as Rodney slips an arm behind his shoulders.

It is almost surreal, this scene, this thing, like the few times he’d let himself picture it. But here, _oh_, here there’s actual touching, and sounds. John squeezes his side, his waist, it feels feral and possessive.

And of all the things they’ve ever imagined for themselves, ending up like this in bed, is not one they ever actually, _sincerely_ thought would happen. It’s a bit of a surprise, because Rodney’s right – in theory, at least, _they_ don’t make sense.

They’re a mathematic problem you are presented when you can barely make sense of fractions. The problem _can_ be solved, but you’re not the right tool for the job.

They’re a question, a puzzle, and damned if Rodney won’t spend the rest of his life trying to solve it.

Then again, maybe it isn’t so surprising they ended up together.

 

**********************************

**15\. There are New Habits.**

It’s a rush in the morning, as soon as they see the first light. John gets back to his bed; Rodney pushes his bed back to the next room and feigns a bad back, as if he’d slept on the chair all night.

Good thing, too – Jennifer shows up just after six, Teyla at around six thirty with Torren biting from one of her fingers; she leaves him with John until the moment he’s let out of the infirmary.

John thinks Rodney may be trying a bit too hard with the complaining about his fake bad back, and even whispers to Rodney to _cut it out already, McKay_, but it’s without feeling, without real sentiment of annoyance behind it.

Routine returns the next day, but it’s hardly routinary. They keep sneaking off to see each other as if they were fourteen–year–olds, Rodney keeps eagerly reminding John the infirmary incident wasn’t a dream at all, not really, not even close.

Missions hardly change at all – they have to be with their ears and eyes open when they’re out in the field, the better not to die by. Rodney’s paranoia and messiah–complex is at its highest when he’s out in the field, which leaves him little time to even think about the Colonel _that_ way.

The thing about routine in Atlantis is that it changes in two ways: subtly or overtly. Never a gray area.

Like when Sam or Woolsey took command of Atlantis: the change of routine doesn’t get much more overt than the change of the Head. However much both leaders tried to make the change as smooth as it was possible, Sam would never be Elizabeth, and Woolsey would never be Sam; each leader brought their own moral codes, rules, habits, backgrounds.

It wasn’t the same being under Sam, ten years of experience in the field and in the lab, as it was being under Woolsey, who got the jitters whenever he had to cross the Stargate.

When the change was subtle, though, it happened in a way you barely even noticed. Like when someone you only sort–of–knew died; like a new scientist that still has to prove himself; like a threat eradicated that still needs to sink into everyone’s minds.

Like someone to come home to at night.

That’s the subtlety of it all: John and Rodney kept their big routines. They still worked late, they still watched their movies, they still played their silly games, and the only thing that changed was that they didn’t need to leave when sleep – or some other mood – presented itself.

They still kept fighting, and bickering and flirting with random pretty girls, but the touch on the shoulder lingered now. The frown of worry for the other was deeper. The jealousy was now overtly about themselves, not because they wanted to get into the pants of a random pretty girl.

The change in routine doesn’t even grow into ‘overt’ when Ronon and Teyla pick up on what the hell is going on between them. Teyla’s smiles are wider, yet a bit more girlish than what they are used to. Ronon chuckles at random intervals, as if to say, ‘_I knew it all along_’. Neither of them says a word about it, not even a peep – five year’s time has taught them well enough how Earth politics function – and the boys are grateful that both Teyla _and_ Ronon know the meaning of the word ‘subtle’.

The sex, though. That was one of the overt changes.

 

**********************************

**16\. There is Love**

It doesn’t get said. It doesn't even get thought of, but it's there.

John runs away from the very mention of the word, Rodney starts sweating and babbling; but they're the first to step forward to protect the other. Sometimes it's with a joke or a simple touch, sometimes it is to step in front of bullets and Wraith. No matter what the Pegasus Galaxy throws at them, you can always find one of them trying to stop it so the other will be safe.

And when they think about it, this isn't new. It's been like that since almost the beginning, a thought that kind of unsettles them a bit, so they don’t linger too much on it.

There is love, but it doesn’t get said. At least with them, it's not important if any of them say the words. Their lesson is this: they’ve learned they speak better with actions.

So that’s how they do all their talking.

***


End file.
